Hose and manufacture thereof



Jan. 15, 1946.

M. BALKIN 2,392,967 HOSE AND MANUFACTURE THEREOF Filed Jan. 7; 1941 mfim Patented Jan. 15, 1946 HOSE AND MANUFACTURE THEREOF.

Mark Balkin, Bentham, England, assignor to The Sillick Holding CompanyLimited, Newcastleupon-Tyne, England Application January 7, 1941,Serial'No. 373,514

In Great Britain March 26, 1940 2 Claims.

Ordinary unlined textile fire and other hose is not entirely watertightinitially, and although this defect greatly diminishes with absorptionof water, it is always, to a small extent, porous. It has the furtherdisadvantage that when wetted during use it tends to become stifl. sothat it cannot be coiled compactly before being dried.

Rubber lined flre hose is completely non-porous, and has the advantagesthat the fabric, not

being wetted by percolation, does not become stiff. in mean a materialwhich, like rubber, can be apin use, while the rubber lining lessens theinternal plied to the carrier in liquid or plastic form, and resistanceto flow. As an example, to illustrate will solidify to form a thinimpervious coating the invention by comparison, ordinary rubber thereonwhich is substantially unaffected by lined hose may be made by drawing arelatively I Water, elastic and flexible. The following are thick rubbertube, coated'with adhesive, through examples of sealing agents which maybe used: the hose, and afterwards passing steam into the rubber latex,flexible chlorinated rubber'comhose to vulcanise the rubber lining andcause it pounds, synthe c ru cellulose compositions to adhere firmly tothe inner wall of the hose. such as cellulose acetate ompositions,synthetic Rubber lined hose is, however, much more costly plasticcompositions, and oilskin compositions, all than unlined hose toproduce. It is also con of which must be flexible and elastic, andsubsiderably heavier, and is difficult to coil comstantially resistanttowater. Rubber latex, among pactly when either in the wet or drycondition. the various sealing agents which maybe used, The presentinvention has for its object topro has particular advantageousproperties for the vide a non-porous and impervious hose which hasdesired purpose, as will be explained hereafter. the advantages of therubber lined hose at present a Although these sealing agents are capableof apon the market, while decreasing the disadvanplication to thecarrier in liquid or plastic form tages of excessive cost and weight andlack' of it may, in so e cases, e e Convenient to flexibility incoiling. By non-porous I mean 9, ply them in the form of a thin solidsheet. hose which is either completely non-porous, or The proofedfabric, or other flexible material, nearly so. is introduced into thehose, and caused to adhere The object is achieved, according to theinven thereto by the application of internal or external tion, byproviding the hose with an internal nonpressure, an adhesive having beenapplied, if porous but thin, flexible and light-weight lining necessary(i. e. if the sealing agent is not itself of rubber or equivalentsealing agent: Such a used as the adhesive), to the surface of thefabric thin lining would have insufiicient strength to which contactswith the inner wall of the hose. enable it to be drawn into a standardlength of If rubber is used as the sealing agent, then this hose (e. g.50-100 ft.) that is to say, a formed thin may be applied to the fabricas thin rubber sheet, tube of rubber or other material equivalentthere-- as rubber latex or in the form of rubber solution, to for thepurposes of this invention, as described and if the rubber is still in atacky condition, no herein, of suitable diameter to serve as a lining,additional adhesive may be required. Alterwould tear or break orotherwise suffer damage if natively, rubberised cloth, as sold on themarket, so drawn, if not reinforced or mounted on a carmay be used,coated, if required, with a suitable rier and the same result wouldfollow if such tube adhesive. After forming the rubber coated fabricwere drawn a shorter distance through a textiler into a tube. it isdrawn through the hose and envelope-making machine, as is hereafterrecaused to adhere to it, either by applying internal ferred to. Iaccordingly apply the lining to a pneumatic, steam or hydraulicpressure, or by flexible carrier, which although light in weightsqueezing the hose between rollers, or in any has sufficient strength toenable it to be drawn in other suitable way. The rubber coating may betubular form through the hose to produce an on both sides of the textilematerial or may form, internal lining therein, and will remain flexibleif on one side only, the inside or outside of the when in position inthe hose. I prefer to use inner lining tube. It is desirable that thefabric fabric as the flexible carrier, but other materials lining shouldadhere to the hose over the whole may, of course, be used instead, forexample celsurface of contact, though this is not essential. lulosecompositions, flexible synthetic plastics, The rubber may be eithervulcanised or unvulor paper, and the expression fabric or the likecanised.

as used herein is to be understood as including such alternativematerials. The sealing agent may be applied to the fabric or othercarrier before or after the latter is made into tubular form. Also itmight in some casesbe advisable to use a carrier which is soluble.inwater or otherwise removable after having served the purpose ofintroducing the lining into the hose.

By the expression "equivalent sealing agent" I.

its an alternative to introducing the rubbered fabric into a previouslymanufactured hose, it

may be introduced continuously into an outer textile envelope during themanufacture of the latter. For example it may, in the case of hose wovenon a circular loom, be incorporated during applied with advantage wherethe weft yarn is coated with rubber latex as described in applicationSerial No. 369,893, filed December 12, 1940, Patent No. 2,353,387 datedJuly 11, 1944, since the latex which penetrates to the interior of thehose will assist/in causing adhesion of the lining to the hose. Itt naybe noted that the thin latex coating on the/fabric carrier has so littlestrength in itself thatl if formed into a tube without a carrier orreinforcement, it would tear or break if drawn through the machine bythe drawing-off rollers referred to.

Hose pipes provided with a thin rubber lining in accordance with theinvention are very light, are only slightly more expensive tomanufacture than ordinary hose pipes, are completely nonporous or almostso and can easily be coiled, wet or dry. Moreover, the effect of therubber lining in eliminating porosity, enables the outer envelope to befabricated of yarn of less high quality than is necessary for unlinedfire hose if this is desired.

In the accompanying drawing is shown one form of non-porous fire hoseaccording to the invention, Figure 1 being a cross section of the hoseon an enlarged scale, and Figure 2 being an enlarged section, partlybroken away, on the line 11-41 in Figure 1.

The hose consists of an outer canvas envelope A about 2.5 mm. inthickness. The thin rubber lining B (see Fig. 2) is applied to the innerface of a tubular cloth carrier C attached to the outer envelope A bymeans of a layer D of cement. In Figure l the rubber proofed cloth isindicated by the letter E, since the scale is insufliciently large toshow the cloth and the rubber separately. The method adopted for themanufacture of the hose was as follows:

The cloth used to form the carrier was a cotton cloth having a thicknessof approximately .12 mm. This was drawn through rubber latex and thusmade to carry a rubber film of approximate thickness .18 mm. on onesurface with a very much thinner film on the other surface. The clothwas then formed into a tube having an overlap joint F and having thethicker film of rubber latex on its inner surface, the tube being formedwhen the rubber latex was sufficiently dry but still tacky enough toenable it to act as the jointing medium at the overlap joint. The tubewas then vulcanised in a hot chamber and subsequently passed through abath containing a suitable cement, the bath being fitted with stricklingknives to reduce the thickness of the cement layer to approximately .2mm. After the solvent had dried of! from the cement, the proofed clothtube was drawninto the canvas envelope, and one end was coupled to asteam pipe and the other to a blank end fitting. Steam under pressurewas then passed through the hose, thus heating the cement and causingadhesion of the tubular insert of proofed cloth to the interior surfaceo t canvas envelope.

In the hose so manufactured, the complete lining, consisting of thelayers of rubber, cloth and cement, has a thickness (.5 mm.) which isvery considerably less than that of the canvas envelope (2.5 mm.) Itwill be understood that this is, a product very different from therubber lined hose at present on the market in which the thickness of thecomplete lining (i. e. rubber plus cement) approximates to that of thetextile envelope. It will further be noted from the above example thatthe coating layer or layers may be of a thickness of about .2 to .3 mm.(say, of the order of .01 inch) while the complete lining may be,roughly, about double this thickness.

While it is preferred, as described above, to cause the lining to adhereto the outer textile envelope, it may in some cases be suflicient toleave the lining loose in the outer envelope and held in position onlyby the couplings at the ends of the length of hose.

It may further be noted that the extremely thin flexible lining such asis described herein, with particular reference to the example given,which is of insufilcient strength to enable the same to be drawn into astandard length of fire hose, when without carrier or reinforcement,will remain substantially impervious when the hose carries waterpressures up to 400 lbs. per square inch. It may further be remarkedthat, while the usual thick rubber linings previously used tend to crackat the selvedges under repeated coiling after use, or when kept coiledin storage, the thin flexible linings herein described will continue tofold flat along the same lines, when coiled after use, without crackingand without the need of special selvedge reinforcement. This is becausethe tendency of a rubber film to crackis a function of its quality andthe angle round which it is bent relative to its thickness. To coil ahose fiat the selvedge of the outer cover must be folded as flat aspossible and the lining at the edge must follow as nearly as possiblethe contours of the inside of the cover when thus bent. The thinner thelining the less the strains imposed by bending to this angle and theless the tendency to crack. This cracking is likely to take place as therubber ages, so that the thin linings suggested enhance the life of thehose.

The following further observations may also be made. The use of the thinflexible carrier not only enables the weak tubing ofrubber or the liketo be drawn into the textile envelope without tearing or dangerousstretching, it is of further importance since without it suitable tubingof the considerable length which is commercially desirable and theextreme thinness contemplated could be made only with great dimculty, ifat all. Thus, if the tubing is made of rubber, either an extrusionmethod or the manufacture of unvulcanisedsheets, which are folded overto make a tube, must be used, and technical difficulties are encounteredwith both if no carrier or backing is employed. The extrusion of suchthin and wide diameter rubber tubing would present special difficultiesand would probably be unpractical, and, with the sheet method, the jointrequired when the sheet is tubed must be an extremely eflective one towithstand considerable water pressure. The best joint (and perhaps theonly one strong enough for efiective use in fire hose) must be madewhile the rubber is still unvulcanised, and, if no backing were used,considerable difiiculties would arise in removing the mandrel on whichthe joint was made, or in pulling the unvulcanised tube past themandrel, without damage to the tube. Also, in the unvulcanisedcondition-such thin sheet would be soft, sticky and plastic and easilydistorted, and would be extremely difllcult to handle in roll form or inlengths suitable for production.

What I claim as my invention and desire to secure by Letters Patent is:

1. The method of producing impervious textile hose, which comprises,forming a coating of thin continuous film of rubber latex on a sheet ofthin textile fabric of vegetable fibres by drawing the fabric throughlatex, forming said coated sheet into tubing, having an overlappedjoint, the latex being utilised as the jointing medium, said coatedtubing being sufliciently strong to enable it to be drawn without damagethereto through a fifty ing it to adhere in position within saidenvelope.

2. The method of producing impervious textile hose, which comprises,producing the outer textile envelope of the hose on a suitable machine,producing tubing of thin flexible fabric having a. continuous thincoating of rubber latex on a surface thereof, said coated tubing beingsufficiently strong to enable it to be drawn without damage theretothrough a fifty foot length of a relatively thick textile envelope ofinternal diameter slight- 1y larger than the exterior diameter of saidtubing', introducing said coated tubing into the interior of saidtextile envelope during the production of the latter, drawing theenvelope ofl the machine continuously, and the coated tubing within thesame therewith, by suitably positioned rollers, and causing adhesionbetween said coated tubing and envelope by the pressure of said rollers,the latex coating on said tubing being so thin that if produced astubing without a carrier or reinforcement it would have insumcientstrength to enable it without substantial damage'to be

